Americans Keep Spending Despite Low Consumer Confidence

Tariff uncertainty and an unstable stock market are weighing on U.S. consumer confidence—it’s down more than 30% since December. But that doesn’t mean Americans have stopped spending money.

March data from the U.S. Census Bureau reveals that most retail segments posted growth for the month, with auto dealers getting the biggest bump—up 9.2% as consumers rushed to buy cars before tariffs went into effect. Americans also spent more on furniture and even dined out more, as spending remained counterintuitively strong.

“Perhaps things aren’t as dour as the consumer sentiment figures would lead you to believe,” Bankrate senior industry analyst Ted Rossman told Forbes. “The past several years, Americans have continued spending despite financial worries and challenges.”

FIRST UP

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday echoed warnings about the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, saying that they’re “likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation.” Powell also talked about the current challenge of pursuing further interest rate cuts, indicating that the Fed would wait for “more clarity.” Trump responded in a Truth Social post Thursday morning, saying Powell’s “termination cannot come fast enough!”

A federal judge ruled that the Trump Administration likely committed criminal contempt when it flew migrants to El Salvador last month, despite a court ruling forbidding it. Judge James Boasberg said he will give the government a chance to “purge” its contempt—likely by returning the migrants it deported—before moving forward with identifying who was responsible for defying his order and referring them for prosecution.

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BUSINESS + FINANCE

Tesla sales in California dropped 15% last quarter, which meant that the EV maker fell below 50% market share in the state for the first time. The decline is about on par with Tesla’s 13% drop globally in Q1, though its dip in the Golden State coincided with an overall 7.3% increase in EV sales.

AI heavyweight Nvidia found itself entangled in the global trade war this week, disclosing that it expects a $5.5 billion hit in Q2 due to chip export restrictions, though Wall Street analysts say it’s far from a disaster scenario. China represented the lowest proportion of Nvidia’s revenue in a decade last year, Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon notes, and UBS’ Timothy Arcuri wrote it could be a “concession” from the semiconductor firm to press the White House to pull back on other AI regulations.

WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP

In 2016, college dropout Lucy Guo cofounded artificial intelligence firm Scale AI with Alexandr Wang. Guo left the company just two years later, but she astutely held on to most of her stake in Scale AI while pursuing her next startup. It’s paid off. With Scale AI wrapping up a tender offer that reportedly values the company at $25 billion, the 30-year-old cofounder is now the youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world, unseating Taylor Swift.

Elon Musk’s pronatalist viewpoint is no secret, and reporting from the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday went into detail on the “harem drama” surrounding the 14 known children the billionaire has had with four women. One of them is 26-year-old conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, who said that Musk is highly sensitive to privacy concerns; he had originally offered her $15 million to keep his paternity secret, plus $100,000 per month until their child turns 21, which she refused.

TECH + INNOVATION ​​

A bipartisan House panel released a report Wednesday accusing DeepSeek of posing a “profound threat” to U.S. national security, alleging the AI startup harvests user data on behalf of the Chinese government. The report cites testimony from OpenAI, which told the committee DeepSeek likely relied on “unlawful” techniques to train its AI models and “circumvented guardrails” to accelerate development at lower costs.

MONEY + POLITICS

California became the first state to mount a legal challenge against President Donald Trump’s tariffs, filing a lawsuit in federal district court Wednesday that alleges Trump has unlawfully imposed tariffs that present “immediate and irreparable harm” to the state’s economy. California is the fifth-largest economy in the world and the biggest importer of any U.S. state, according to the New York Times.

MORE: Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday that the Justice Department will sue Maine’s education department, after the state refused to comply with Trump’s executive order preventing transgender athletes from playing in women’s and girls’ sports. The lawsuit comes after Trump verbally sparred with Governor Janet Mills in February over the issue.

TRENDS + EXPLAINERS

Pedestrians walking the streets of Seattle on Wednesday might have noticed an odd voice when using the city’s crosswalks: Jeff Bezos. “Please, please don’t tax the rich. Otherwise, all the other billionaires will move to Florida, too,” the spoof audio said, referencing the Amazon founder’s residency change that saved him an estimated $1 billion in taxes. The apparent hack is similar to an incident in California this week, when crosswalks mimicked the voices of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.